Two Years

Sigh, June 28.

Hard to tell if the time has gone by slow or fast, yet it feels like a lifetime.  This was from our trip to Montana in 1998.  Yellowstone Park.

Four Months

Tomorrow is the 28th of the month.  It has been four months since Zach took his life on June 28th.  Tomorrow is All Saints' Sunday.  Or maybe it is the next Sunday.   In either case, we will honor the saints tomorrow.   In church we will pass the microphone around the sanctuary so people can name those who have died this past year and we will ring the singing bowl when each name is mentioned.    

In the afternoon, Lovely, Daughter, and I will sprinkle some of his ashes around a tree planted in his memory at Holston Camp.  Then on Monday I leave for Montana to visit my parents and extended family.  I haven't seen my parents since Zach died.   And yes, I will take the bus.  It's what I do.

I have been reading, My Son, My Son:  A Guide to Healing After Death, Loss, or Suicide by Iris Bolton.  She lost her son to suicide.  She was a counselor at a counseling center, "The Link."   A couple of board members had said after her son's death:

"If she couldn't help her own son, how can she expect to help anyone else?"

She goes on to say:

The funny thing is that I agreed.  So paralyzing is the combination of depression, guilt, and shock, that its victim is mentally reduced to a jackstraw, a hollow man, a cipher.  p. 36

I know that feeling.  How could/can I be a minister, preaching, teaching, and counseling when I failed my most important assignment?   Who in their right minds would listen to anything I have to say when in my primary role as a father I delivered to the world a corpse rather than a living, productive man? 

Iris Bolton faces the goblins and continues as a counselor.  She writes:

Some persons had declared openly that The Link was finished if I were to return.  But we continued to be busy.  Parents began to refer teenagers to me for help in preventing their suicides, and I was overwhelmed with the wonder of it.  How could they think that I might help them when I had failed to save my own son?  I was in awe of what seemed to be a miracle.  More than anything else, it helped me to begin to find some meaning in the meaninglessness of Mitch's death.  p. 40

At some point she decided to disagree with the voices outside (and more importantly inside) of her that said she was a failure.   She stuck it out.   I hope I can be that strong.

It isn't even so much "the job" as it is the existential feeling of failing.  I failed to give my son whatever it was he needed to keep going.   I also know that I did what I could given my human fallibility.   I know that if I were responsible for this death it wouldn't have happened.   But I don't know if that feeling of failure will ever go away.

Autumn Leaves

One of our church members, Samantha, was a camper when Zach was a counselor at Holston Camp in 2006.  She shared this pic of Zach helping out one of the campers.    He was really good with them.  I wondered if he might have gone into some kind of work with kids. 

Lovely, Daughter, and I returned from vacation Saturday night.  We found the leaves had changed and already are falling.

It may be a long winter.

Narrative

On Friday we received the official death certificate from the funeral home.   It took over three months for the officials to finish their work.   On the lower left a little box was checked next to the word, "suicide."   We knew that of course.  The police had originally told us it was an accident but eventually we determined what had happened.   Now it is official.  A box has been checked on a government document.  Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

Saturday was a hard day.  There are many hard days to come.   I wonder how long it will take for me to create my own meaning from this.  Grief experts say I need a narrative.   I suppose I have been trained for that task.  I am after all, a "religious professional."     One of my working definitions of religion is to create meaning out of a meaningless existence.   We are storytellers and narrative-makers.  We come from a long line of them.

Lawrence Krauss tells us that universes pop in and out of existence without any supernatural shenanigans.   We live and move and have our being in one of those "pops."  What does that mean?    The author of Genesis took a crack at it, "When God began creating..." as did the author of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word...."  I suppose for some Genesis and John still work well.   At times even for me.   I am giving it a college try to create my own narrative of meaning in a Krauss Universe.   You can find it in the pages of this blog and in my Sunday sermons.  It isn't much, but it's mine. 

Religion tries to make sense of out of senseless tragedy and violence.  The Romans tortured and executed thousands of rebels and undesirables by public crucifixion as a warning and as demonstration of power.  One of these poor wretches is named, has stories attached to him, and is turned into a god.  His death saves the world from sin.  His resurrection brings believers to eternal life.  That is quite a narrative.  It was a narrative compelling enough to create Christendom.   It works for some.   At times, even for me.    I am giving it a college try to create my own narrative of the meaning of Jesus.   You can find it in the pages of this blog and in my Sunday sermons.  It isn't much, but it's mine. 

I admit that I am better at deconstructing than constructing.   I am better at poking holes in narratives than in creating them.   But my personal task now is to construct.  So what is the narrative for the life and death of my beautiful boy?    It won't be much but it will be mine.    Hopefully, it will be a narrative that will help me to carry on, to forget myself in laughter more often than not, to get lost in a sunset, to grow old a little wiser, to grow closer to my Lovely and my daughter, to own my sad feelings and to weep through them, to discover a deeper sense of compassion, to live life as fully as I can, and to live it for my son and for me.   I want my narrative of Zach to help me do that.   

It will have to include the story of the time he called us into the bathroom.   He was maybe two or three.  He was sitting on the toilet, bent over with the seat cover on his back.  He laughed and said he was a teenage mutant ninja turtle.  Any narrative of my Zach will include a story of him racing down the street in his Big Wheel wearing his cowboy boots.   It will include him standing proudly with me and greeting parishioners on their way out the door.  It will have to include both of us in our Taekwondo uniforms, and playing video games, and skiing at Snow Ridge.  Hugs.  How do you tell a narrative about Zach hugs?  How do you put hugs in words?    The way he called me, "Pops."   How do I write the way he called me "Pops"?

His heart.  His big heart.   His big compassionate heart that wouldn't let him hurt a bug.  His big heart wouldn't let him stand for meanness or let him see someone bullied without speaking up.   His big heart and his mind knew pain.   He felt pain, excruciating, senseless, meaningless pain that he couldn't share, that I couldn't take from him, that I couldn't reach.   I don't know how to tell that story, not now, not yet, but someday I may be able to tell of his courageous and lonely struggle.   I may never grasp this meaninglessness, but I will tell his story--my story of Zach.    He gave us so much joy.   Amidst it all, he gave us joy.  I will keep him in my heart, always.         

Meaning of Life, Part 78

We live in a world that doesn't like pain. We too might be tempted to turn from it, to keep the stiff upper lip. But grief asks us to touch pain, to sit with pain and to ask it to tea.

Being with your sorrow is brave. It is counter culture courage. Not only is there nothing wrong with you for feeling your pain, know that it takes strength to venture into this frightening territory.
~Ashley Davis Bush

Tracing Rainbows Through the Rain -- A Sermon

Tracing Rainbows Through the Rain

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

September 30, 2012

O joy that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to Thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And feel the promise is not vain

That morn shall tearless be.

--George Matheson

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night’,

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

--Psalm 139-7-12

George Matheson was a Scottish theologian and preacher whose career spanned the latter half of the 19th century. He died in 1906. He was a liberal thinker who attempted to integrate faith with modern science. In 1885 he wrote a book entitled, Can the Old Faith Live with the New? or, The Problem of Evolution and Revelation. In it he argued that accepting evolution would not undermine the faith.

That was 1885.

He wrote a hymn, O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go. A line from that hymn is the title of today’s sermon.

This is what Matheson said about the hymn:

"The hymn was composed in the manse of Innellan on the evening of June 6, 1882, when I was 40 years of age. I was alone in the manse at that time. It was the night of my sister’s marriage, and the rest of the family were staying overnight in Glasgow. Something happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression of having it dictated to me by some inward voice rather than of working it out myself. I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a day spring from on high.

There has been much speculation regarding the “severe mental suffering” that he was feeling. One story suggests that his suffering was due to a lost love. He wrote this hymn on the occasion of his sister’s marriage. At one point in his life he was going to be married. During that period of engagement he learned that he was losing his eyesight. There was nothing the doctors could do. His fiancé broke off the engagement saying she couldn’t live her life with a blind man.

He went blind while studying for the ministry. His sister took care of him during the years. Now on the eve of his sister’s wedding, who knows, perhaps feeling the sadness of his own loss during a celebratory time, he wrote this hymn.

Others speculate that it was the anguish of perhaps losing his faith in the light of modernism and science, particularly the theories of Darwin, that inspired the hymn. We don’t know. All we have is speculation and projection of our own mental suffering onto him. Matheson himself said something happened that “was known only to myself.”

It is a beautiful hymn. I never really paid much attention to it. Rarely have I selected it for worship until about a year or so ago. After Zach’s death, these past three months, it has been close to me. This is the third verse:

O joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.

This is the heart of the via negativa,
that spiritual path of letting go and letting be.
It is a path.
It is a path of trust that loss and the accompanying pain
is not the absence of the Sacred but a path to the Sacred.

Thus rather than bury the pain,
or hide it,
or deny it,
or be ashamed of it,

this path is an invitation to embrace it,
to name it,
to write a song about it,
or a poem,
to talk about it,
to walk with it.

The hope is that in so doing,
we can move through it and beyond it
and in the experience be touched by the Holy.

This is the path of Krishna:

“If you get rid of your ego and become like a hollow reed flute, then the Lord will come to you, pick you up, put his lips and breathe through you and out of the hollowness of your heart, the captivating melody will emerge for all creations to enjoy.”

This is the path of Jesus:

“After he called the crowd together with his disciples, he said to them, “If any of you wants to come after me, you should deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow after me. Remember, if you try to save your life, you’ll lose it, but if you lose your life for the sake of the good news, you’ll save it.”

 And from the Gospel of Thomas:

Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Both Krishna and Jesus are offering invitations to trust. Neither is glorifying pain or suffering. They are not calling us to throw pity parties. They are inviting us to acknowledge what is real and offering the hope that staying with it and going through it will be the path of wholeness or wholeheartedness.

That trust requires heart. The word for courage comes from the Latin “cor” which means heart. This pain, this darkness, this rain, feels endless. It feels as though there is no possible good to come of it. It feels wrong, inappropriate, unjust, sacrilegious, even to hope or trust that there is a rainbow to trace.

I don’t want a freaking rainbow, I want my son back. I want my husband back. I want my mother back. I want my life back the way it was.

The open heart also known as courage is the willingness to live with that inner conflict, name it and not judge it. It is what Matthew Fox calls it, “cosmic anguish.” It isn’t tidy. It isn’t pretty. It is real.

But what if we weren’t able to feel the cosmic anguish? What if we quickly hid it away? Remember the song by the Beatles, “Hey, you’ve got to hide your love away.”

We don’t want to see that. Put it away.

We are a culture that demands that everyone be upbeat.

My first radio job was in Mountain Home, Idaho. It was a little AM station that played country music. We played records on the turntable. I read the news, the agricultural reports, and the town gossip. After I was there a few months, the station was bought by a Mormon family. They were nice folks. In fact, they were very upbeat. They changed the call letters and we had to identify ourselves as “Country Sunshine.” We disc jockeys had to play two upbeat songs for every slow song. That isn’t easy to do with country music. You have to really search for those upbeat ones. Not only that, but we were required to turn up the speed on the turntables to make the songs sound even more upbeat.

No rain allowed at 1240 AM Country Sunshine.

I get it. No one wants downer people. No one wants to listen to bummer man.

Hey, you’ve got to hide your grief away.

We know that.
We know that we need to put on the game face,
clean up and do our duty.
Fake it until you make it.

We need to know that there is a price for that. If we don’t recognize the cosmic anguish and if we are not attentive to what is behind the game face, we may not resolve our grief. For the sake of surviving this culture, we may stay on this side of our pain and never pass through it. It can forever haunt us. The via negativa is the spiritual path that invites to make time and to take time for those feelings that we may have buried or hidden. We give them their due so that we can let them go.

I am grateful today to and for George Matheson, that on June 6, 1882, he took off the game face that he needed to put on for his sister’s wedding, and for five minutes allowed his hollowed heart to hear the music of Spirit and put these words to pen and paper.

O cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust
       life’s glory dead,
And from the ground
       there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

Amen.

A Note for Family and Friends

My Lovely knows how to get things done.  I thought I wanted/needed to write a personal note to everyone who had offered an expression of sympathy.   I read all the cards we received with tears but finally realized that responding to each with a personal note was never going to happen.  Lovely drafted this letter, purchased cards, stationary and envelopes, and we sent cards and letters to those for whom we had addresses.  I know we missed people.   So many people responded with calls, food, hugs, practical expressions of help, and I hope you know you are treasured.

We put it in this month's church newsletter.  This is for you with our heartfelt gratitude.

Dear Family and Friends,

As John and Katy and I stumble on with the grieving over the loss of our Zach, we want you to know that we are so grateful for you.

We were/are so numb that we might not remember all of the kindnesses you bestowed on us. Please forgive us for not acknowledging each and every one individually. We want you all to know that we are so thankful and would not be recovering at all but for:

The vigil you kept with us during those first shock-filled days.
Your thoughts, prayers, love, hugs, friendship, laughter.
Food, Food, and........more Food!!!!
Listening ears, helping hands.
Lovely flowers, cards, photos and shared memories of Zach.
The beautiful memorial services you helped us create in order to celebrate his Life -
both private and public.
The thoughtful memorial gifts you have given in his name.

As summer turns to fall and our lives without Zach continue on (inexplicably), we will hold the memory of your support precious in our hearts and minds. None of us can ever remember being so blessed by human kindness.

Beverly O'Connor Shuck for the Shuck Family
Rev. John, Bev, and Katy

Via Negativa -- Letting Go and Letting Be

The Fall 2012 worship guide is on the web page.  These are the themes through Christmas.   The path we explore during autumn is the via negativa or the way of letting go and letting be.    With Zach's death, this is a path I am on whether I want to be or not.   The wisdom is that it is a path, a way, a vehicle to the Sacred.    That is the courage part for me.   It is a path not of wallowing, not of grief for grief's sake, but to slog through it (I can hardly say dance) in order to at some point let go of it. 

I wrote the following in the guide:

Nothing is more painful than letting go.  Sometimes we have to let go what has been ripped from us. At other times we need to let go what is no longer meaningful but is still part of us. We may have to let go of our dreams. We may need to let go of habits or addictions or our values and beliefs.  And then there is loss. We experience a series of losses from the day of our birth.  Negotiating our way through these losses is the perilous journey of life.

The via negativa is a spiritual path. It is the path of letting go. It is the way of hollowing out, stripping away, and setting free. No one would be willing to let go if this were the only path. The way to survive this, to be courageous enough to let go, is to trust that letting go isn’t the last word. Creativity, the gift of life, and rebirth are also possible.

As the season of letting go, Autumn, approaches Winter Solstice, our various religious traditions anticipate the light that shines in the darkness. Another metaphor is the music that blows through the hollowed flute. This is the promise expressed by Krishna: 

“If you get rid of your ego and become like a hollow reed flute, then the Lord will come to you, pick you up, put his lips and breathe through you and out of the hollowness of your heart, the captivating melody will emerge for all creations to enjoy.” 

In the summer we explored happiness. This season we move deeper and embrace wholeheartedness. A helpful friend through this season will be Dr. Brene Brown, author of The Gifts of Imperfection: Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life.  Dr. Brown writes about what we need to let go in order to embrace who we are.

If you have created a poem, a piece of music, a dance, a children’s sermon, a meditation, a sculpture, a painting or other artistic work that fits the theme, contact me and I will create a space in the worship service for your creative element. You may also have hymns or poems you have run across that you think will be appropriate. We welcome you to sing in the choir, play the bells, or participate in an ensemble.

If you are near our mountain, join us for worship and invite a friend.

Grief Is Love that has Lost Its Object--A Sermon

Grief is Love that has Lost Its Object

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, TN

September 23, 2012

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Matthew 5:1-4

The four vias or paths of Creation Spirituality are just that—vias or paths. They are ways. They are not ends in themselves. Movement is the guiding metaphor. The movement is not just upward. They are not ladders to climb as much as spirals to dance.

Yesterday the calendar commanded that summer give way to fall. Even if the calendar refused and decided to deny the end of summer, it wouldn’t matter. The leaves on the trees surrounding Watauga Lake would begin to let go of their green anyway. Temperatures would begin to cool. Earth moves around the sun such that in our part of the planet it appears to go to sleep a little earlier each evening.  This happens whether or not we with our calendars, language, and reasoning manage to make sense of it or not. Life happens if we are ready for it or not. So does death.

It doesn’t matter if we like summer or don’t like summer. It passes. I suppose one could move around the globe so you never have to leave summer. It is always summer somewhere. You could follow it so that you never have to see the trees let go of their green or feel the temperatures cool or bid the sun goodnight until late at night every night.

That would be a path or via too. The via positiva all the time. Endless summer. As we disc jockeys used to breathlessly announce: “Nonstop music. One hit after another.”

Most of us are not quite so nomadic, following endless summer with our surfboards. We know the other seasons as well. We know Fall, Winter, and Spring. If we have been around long enough and been fortunate to have lived through a number of these seasons, we may have found in them some sense of significance. While summer might be free and easy, bright and cheerful, there is something to these other seasons too. While we may have a favorite, if we are intentional about it, we can find something to stir our soul in the others.

But we really don’t have a choice. The seasons change whether we are intentional about finding meaning and significance in them or not.

The spiritual path of the via positiva the way of awe and wonder may be the path of choice. It is the happy path. It is the celebration of life. It is noticing the blue heron as she flies just a few inches above the water. It is allowing her flight to inspire wonder and reverence for these magnificent creatures and for all of life.

She is going to do her blue heron thing whether or not I take notice of her and admire her or not. The via positiva only becomes a spiritual path for me when I allow it to be. The via positiva is not about what is. It is about the awe and wonder for what is.

We know that we can go through our day and not notice the miracle of our existence. That is why all spiritual figures, deep thinkers, interesting people, and wise sages have told us since stories began to stop and take notice. Our man, Jesus, said: “Consider the lilies.”

“Consider…” I think that wonderfully understated translation of that verb is the essence of the via positiva-- “Consider…” Don’t just ignore or take for granted or use, “Consider…”

Consider creation, say the sages. If you have a spiritual bone in your body, marvel at it. Question it. Puzzle over it. Try to calculate it with numbers and equations. Write poems about it. Sing to it. Paint it. Allow yourself to be taken by it, to fall for it, to love it, to fall in love with it.

That is what education used to be, you know. It wasn’t something you purchased so that you could learn the technical skills and receive the required paperwork to be a drone in some cubicle doing something of no interest to you so you could get a paycheck to buy stuff made by other drones.

Education used to be about the via positiva. Consider and marvel at creation so that you might get a glimpse of what it means to be a human being before your life is over. Human beings have a job. That job is to tell our story. We are here to tell the truth of what we see, hear, feel, consider….

The via positiva is the path of noticing this world. Mary Oliver is one of our teachers. This is her poem, Invitation:

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude--
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

That is the via positiva. We notice. We fall in love.
Maybe in so doing we change our life.

Then we get the call in the middle of the night.
The one we love, the one we give our heart to,
The one we live our life for,
Is gone.

She is the mother who held us,
who sang to us,
who was our strength,
and now she sits in her wheelchair and cannot remember our name.

He is the husband who loved us with passion,
who laughed freely without reservation,
whose illness took him long before we were ready.

He is the son, tender, sensitive, smiling,
But whose pain was too great for him to bear.

She is the forest destroyed, the stream polluted, the wildlife vanished.

It is nearly impossible to go through this life without being cheated.
That which we love leaves.
That will happen whether we want it or not.
That love doesn’t end.
The love remains.
The object of our love--
the forest, the husband, the mother, the son--
leaves.
But it isn’t as though we can just turn off the love.
We can try, I suppose.
We can try to numb it, bury it, deny it.
It is still there.
Love when it loses its object does not cease.
It changes to grief.
It demands attention.
It invites the heart to be present.
It invites us on another spiritual path.
Not the one that considers the lilies or the blue heron,
No this path requires courage as well as consideration.
When love turns to grief it hurts.
It hurts badly.
It hurts for a long time.
The spiritual path, the via negativa, is to be attentive to the grief.
And not to turn away.

I turn to Mary Oliver again. From her poem, Love Sorrow:

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.

Amen.

Dreams

For several nights a week I have been sleeping in Zach's bed in Zach's old room.  Over the past couple of weeks I have had some dreams.

***

I am in a funeral home.  It is an old funeral home in Gray, Tennesssee.  In real life I had been there for another funeral a few weeks ago.   In my dream, Zach is in the coffin.   Suddenly he sits up.   He starts looking around with jerky motions like in those zombie movies.   The funeral director is kind of wild-eyed and wild-haired, like the scientist in Back to the Future.  He is holding Zach and says, "Don't worry.  They do this all the time."  

Zach is trying to speak and he looks angry.  He finally says:  "My parents didn't understand my pain."

Then he starts mumbling all kinds of things that don't make any sense.  I realize there is there is nothing there for me and I leave.

***

In another dream, Zach isn't in it, but I know somehow it is about Zach.  With me is a little girl.  She wants to climb Rapunzel's hair.  But it is more like a hair rope.   The story is really Jack and the Beanstalk.   I tell her it isn't a good idea.  But she starts climbing and I reluctantly climb with her.  I know that if we start this we won't come back because everything is moving up too fast.   Different worlds appear to us.  She enters one and finds herself older, but in the same abusive relationship.   I realize the worlds are the same even as we may be different people in them.

***

Zach is a baby or maybe one or one and a half.  I am tickling him and saying, "Funny boy, funny boy."  He is laughing that gutteral, "Heh, heh, heh," he used to do.  I feel his body.  His stomach.  The soft skin on his shoulders.  We are happy.  Then I see he needs his diaper changed.   It is filled with tar black poop.   His sister knows where the "Wet Ones" are and I start to clean him up.   I have to clean him up on a white carpet.  It is a big job but I think I finally do it.

***

This morning I dreamt I was holding him on my lap.  He is about 9 or 10.  I can feel his muscular calves.   He is wearing those red shorts with the black stripe.  I was holding him around  his waist and pleading with him, "Don't leave us Zachy.  Don't leave us.  Please don't leave us."

I wake up crying.

Ordination Anniversary

Now I know what is going on with me today.   September 13th is my 20th anniversary of my ordination as a minister in the PC(USA).   I was ordained September 13th, 1992 by Utica Presbytery at the First Presbyterian Church of Lowville, NY.

 
Earlier this year I had thought of making this a big deal then with Zach I forgot about it.    I served this congregation for eight years.  It is where Zach and Katy mostly grew up.  Michelle graduated from high school here.  

This is the first day of school 1992, probably a week or two before my ordination service. 

This is Zach and Grammy Elsa getting ready for the snow in our house in Lowville.  Notice the date of the photo is March 13th.  Winter lasts forever in Northern New York. 

Katy and Zach with Zach's best friend, John, from across the street.  You want a warm costume for Halloween.  That is usually when the first snow hits. 

Christmas in Lowville.

With John and his little brother, David.  

Playing cards with his sister.  

Thank you, Lowville, New York, for good memories.   Those were some happy times.

Eleven Weeks

Every Thursday and every 28th of the month will be a way to mark time.  I don't know if it will always be like that.   Eleven weeks ago our universe was altered.  Now I know why the biblical authors used apocalyptic language.  Like this from Joel:

Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests;
wail, you ministers of the altar.
Come, pass the night in sackcloth,
you ministers of my God!....

Alas for the day!
For the day of the Lord is near,
and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.
Is not the food cut off
before our eyes,
joy and gladness
from the house of our God?

The seed shrivels under the clods,
the storehouses are desolate;
the granaries are ruined
because the grain has failed.
How the animals groan!
The herds of cattle wander about
because there is no pasture for them;
even the flocks of sheep are dazed....

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—
a day of darkness and gloom...

 The earth quakes before them,
   the heavens tremble.
The sun and the moon are darkened,
   and the stars withdraw their shining.

I never thought I would write this but that is some damn good poetry.   

Zach would laugh at me because yesterday I cried when I heard Skeeter Davis.    How screwed up is that?

Numbness

I am not in the fetal position.

I feel like I should be.

You may catch me smiling.

Don't be fooled.

Numbness is a defense

my body uses

so I can

move 

through

the 

day.

Don't feel sorry for me.

It is life

...and death.

But I do like to know
you're there.

On The Way--A Sermon

On the Way

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

September 9, 2012

“If I do not go to the hell to help the suffering beings there, who else will go? ... if the hells are not empty I will not become a Buddha. Only when all living beings have been saved, will I attain Bodhi.”

--Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva

Today we wrap up the summer preaching series on happiness. It has been hard even to say that last sentence. Life has been lived in a fog since the death of Zach. I feel like I am living but not living. I am not exactly sure what the word “surreal” means, but it seems to apply. I am thankful for the mind and body’s natural defenses that only allow this shock of realization at intervals.

It has been jarring to continue this sermon series on happiness at a time when my family and I are going through the most devastating period in our lives. And yet amidst this injustice, the birds are oblivious and inappropriately, keep singing.

In that same inappropriate way, I preach on happiness. Yet oddly enough, it is appropriate.

The word happiness sounds so trite. It is like finally getting to meet the President and all you get are a few sentences and you waste them commenting on the weather. It is like sitting down for dinner and all that is served is candy.

Is it the word, “happiness” that is the problem? Would the word “joy” be better? Could be. Is there something too self-focused about the word happiness? Too much navel gazing? It is like skimming the covers of the tabloids in the supermarket aisle. The celebrities only have first names. Kate and Tom breaking up. Justin and Aniston getting engaged. Miley and Pink jealous of each other’s mohawk. If these celebrities with their looks, wealth, and connections cannot quite seem to corner happiness is there any hope for the rest of us? What is this happiness that we are chasing?

This summer we looked at the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. He seemed to me to make as much sense as any. Happiness is pretty much something we are wired for or not. We can cheat and boost up our biological set point by meditation, possibly medication, and reframing our behaviors and outlook. Increasing the quality and quantity of our relationships can increase happiness. Plus discovering and using our strengths to do meaningful things can add to happiness.

There are other things he writes about that can add to happiness, like surviving adversity and working on those old fashioned ideas called virtues that our great-grandparents knew. Ben Franklin made his own list of 13 virtues. He made a chart and he would evaluate himself at the end of the day as to how well he did exercising his virtues. These virtues included humility, tranquility, silence, chastity, cleanliness, moderation, justice, sincerity, industry, frugality, resolution, order, and temperance. He said he wasn’t perfect by any means. But the discipline, he said, made him a better person. Ben Franklin was a pretty happy guy.

My first congregation was in upstate New York. I remember some of the Mennonite families would use the names of virtues to name their children. I found myself taken aback when I would run into someone named Temperance or Patience. I wonder if it helped. With a name like Patience you don’t want to be caught cutting in front of others in the line at the Wal-Mart.

Earlier this year Columbia University’s Earth Institute published the World Happiness Report. They made their conclusions based on a number of factors including health, job security, political freedom and so forth. They discovered that the happiest nations were Scandinavian countries. Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Netherlands topped the list. Following in order of happiness were Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and then coming in at eleven was the United States. The authors of the report wrote:

"While basic living standards are essential for happiness, after the baseline has been met happiness varies more with the quality of human relationship than with income...Policy goals should include high employment and high-quality work; a strong community with high levels of trust and respect, which government can influence through inclusive participatory policies; improved physical and mental health; support of family life; and a decent education for all."

I appreciate that Columbia University is making an attempt at uncovering what social, political, and economic factors contribute to well-being or happiness and what we can do as communities of people to increase levels of happiness. They show that happiness or contentment or well-being is important to evaluate and to pursue. Happiness it appears is not so much a state or a goal, but a way or a path.

According to this report great inequality within a nation or community is one thing that serves to decrease the level of happiness of everyone, even those who appear to benefit.

It is an old lesson. If we wish to be happy, we would do well to increase the potential for the happiness of others. If meaningful work, education, good relationships, a comfortable income, good health, personal freedom, and so forth are available to me and make me happy that is good. But if my neighbors are not able to attain those things, my happiness actually decreases. That is only reasonable because that means I am a human being. Human beings cannot truly be happy in the midst of the suffering of others unless they are actively engaged in relieving that suffering. Happiness cannot ever be an individualistic pursuit. We can only be happy to the extent that we bring happiness to others.

That wisdom is at least as ancient as the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva is motivated by compassion to bring Buddhahood or enlightenment to all beings. The image is that the bodhisattva refuses to enter Nirvana, or heaven to use a Christian word, until all beings enter Nirvana. The idea that there would be heaven where the righteous experience bliss while others suffer in hell would be an anathema. Only a sociopath could be happy--if that is what you could call it--in such an existence.

It is impossible truly to be happy and at bliss knowing that others suffer. The bodhisattva devotes his or her existence to bringing others to enlightenment. The point is that this is a never-ending task. The deeper point is that it is in the doing of it, it is in the compassionate work of bringing others to enlightenment that the bodhisattva actually lives happiness. Happiness, or enlightenment, or contentment is not a state or a goal but a way.

Jesus Christ can be understood as a bodhisattva. This is the great hymn from Paul’s letter to the Philippians about the Christ:

I appeal to all of you to think in the same way that the Anointed Jesus did, who
Although he was born in the image of God,
Did not regard “being like God”
As something to use for his own advantage,
But rid himself of such vain pretension
And accepted a servant’s lot.

Since he was born like all human beings
And proved to belong to humankind,
He recognized his true status
And became trustfully obedient all the way to death,
Even to death by crucifixion.

That is why God raised him higher than anyone
And awarded him the title that is above all others,

So that on hearing the name “Jesus,”
Ever knee should bend,
Above the earth, on the earth, and under the earth,
And every tongue declare: “Jesus the Anointed is lord!”
To the majestic honor of God , our great Benefactor.  (Scholars' Version)

Paul, in reciting this hymn, is admonishing his friends to do the same thing, to share the same attitude. Even as Judaism and Christianity on one hand and Hinduism and Buddhism on the other come from geographically different places and from different cultures and developed differing languages and different symbolic expressions, at the deepest levels, their fundamental affirmations are similar.

Who is the happy person? Who is the contented, enlightened, and whole person? Who is the saved person? It is the one who realizes that happiness is not something to attain. Happiness is not a noun. It is a verb. It is a way of being for all beings.

The literature about the bodhisattvas is wonderful. There are billions of these beings and they appear to us all the time even as we don’t know it. Sometimes it is the cashier at the store. Sometimes it is an animal. They appear to us and do things to awaken us. You can’t just make people enlightened. People have to realize it on their own. The Bodhisattvas have to sort of, well, trick you into it. In those experiences in which you have had an increase in awareness or an aha! moment, a bodhisattva opened that path for you. You can have fun with this. You don’t have to take it literally, but the imagery of the universe filled with bodhisattvas in disguise seeking to make all beings happy and enlightened is a wonderful image. When feeling discouraged knowing that all these beings are on our side is comforting.

Now the thing is…that you are a Bodhisattva as well. You are that for others. Don’t be afraid to take that role. That is the deep wisdom. Now this same thing is in the Christian tradition. The Cosmic Christ is within and among us. As the risen Christ was with the walkers on the Emmaus road and they didn’t realize it until they all broke bread together, so the Christ is with us and is seen in the aha! moments, the breaking of the bread, the unexpected laughter, the act of compassion, the suffering shared. The point again, as Paul writes in Philippians, is that we are to be of the same mind. We are to be Christ for another.

You want to be happy? You are not alone. Billions and billions of bodhisattvas and little christs are conspiring at this very moment to help you.

The clincher is that you are one of them.

Amen.

Still Searching

Still I am searching.   Searching for sense from no sense.   I am gathering up photos of Zach perhaps thinking that somehow I will learn something, but more than that, change something.   I know it is absurd, yet I do it.   This is a photo I took on my phone.  I think this was taken on Father's Day, the last day we saw him.  He was sitting under his high school portrait.  His right arm is in the same position as in the portrait.    I thought it was funny so I teased him and took his photo.

Here is another day in which I tortured the children with my phone camera.  That is my job isn't it?   

I miss you, Buddy.

Birthday

My birthday is today.   I am 51.  I remember my father's 51st birthday.  It is the first birthday of his that I remember.   I was seven.   The previous summer we had moved to Butte, Montana from Winthrop, Washington.  My father decided that seven years of cattle ranching was about enough fun and returned to teaching.  He taught Chemistry at Montana Tech in Butte until his retirement.

On his 51st birthday, my mom made him a cake.  It had five big candles and one little candle.   I remember this so clearly.  She counted them off:  "Ten, Twenty, Thirty, Forty, Fifty, and one."   Blowing out 51 candles would have been vulgar.   Once you hit fifty you start counting in decades.   

Longevity is in the genes.  I celebrated with my father his 94th birthday this summer on June 6th.   I can't remember if we had a cake for him or not.  If we did I am sure we used those candles that are shaped liked numbers, 9 and 4.   Funny, I really don't remember if we had candles for him or not.  After 94 birthdays he may have graduated from having to blow out candles.   Just give him his favorite, pecan pie, already.

My father has had a lot of birthdays.   I haven't been there for all of them but for a good number of them.   I am lucky that way.   I have to remember that today.    Because it is going to be a sad day.  Zach won't be at his old man's 51st birthday, let alone his old man's 94th should that unlikely event occur.

It is those little things like memories of birthday candles that come out of nowhere and heat up that burning hole in the chest. 

Here are a couple of photos I just found in my Facebook collection.  Here are my parents and me from three years ago in Montana. 

Zach and I (and Lovely in the background) waiting outside Grimaldi's in Brooklyn, NY on Thanksgiving 2010.   That was a good trip.

Birthdays still happen until they don't.  As impossible as it seems, we still have memories to make.    

Chasing Happiness--A Sermon

Chasing Happiness

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

August 26, 2012

“His disciples said to him, ‘When will the Father’s empire come?’ ‘It won’t come by watching for it. It won’t be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the Father’s empire is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.’”

--Gospel of Thomas 113

Happiness is the theme for this summer’s worship services. For the past few years I have coordinated the worship services around the four paths of Creation Spirituality. I connect a path to a season of the year. Summer with its abundance seems logically connected to the via positiva. The way or the path of wow and wonder. It is a path of fullness. It is life and light and fruitfulness. It is royalty and celebration. It is music in 4/4 time. It is joyful. It is happy.

This summer I thought it would be good to examine happiness. What can we learn about happiness from the sages in our past as well as from our present knowledge. What is happiness from the perspective of science and spirit? A helpful guide has been Jonathan Haidt and his book, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.

In one of his chapters he introduces the happiness formula:

H = S + C + V

H is happiness.

S is our biological set point. According to Dr. Haidt, happiness is set for us biologically. Happiness for the most part is in our genes. It isn’t only in our genes. We can adjust our set point or our set range. Dr. Haidt says we can cheat and push up that set point in three ways,

1. medication
2. meditation and
3. cognitive behavioral therapy (ie. “fake it ‘til you make it”).

The sages past discovered early on, long before medication, that meditation was the principle way to increase happiness, to raise that set point. They knew of medication too. But it is trickier. It can have side effects. Drink that gladdens the heart can also cause other problems. The medication that the psychologist, Dr. Haidt is referring to is modern medication such as Prozac. That has been helpful, in many cases life-saving, but also tricky. Of course, CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy was probably linked to virtue in the past. The ancient form of CBT would be in the Book of Proverbs. The wisdom found there is about changing behavior. Such as:

Do not love sleep, or else you will come to poverty;
open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread.

All cultures have sage wisdom, much of it having to do with modifying behavior. For the most part, happiness is set biologically. From a modern perspective, these are three things that can boost up that set point and provide a head start: Medication, Meditation, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.  That is the S in the equation. There is more.

H = S + C + V

C represents the conditions of life. While the Buddha might have insisted that happiness is within, there are some external things that can affect our happiness, and we would do well to change them if we can.  According to the serenity prayer:

Give me the courage to change the things I can.
The serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
The wisdom to know the difference.

Some of the things to change if you can are exposure to noise, commuting time, amount of control over your own life decisions and stressors, body image, and the one that trumps them all:  

“the strength and number of a person’s relationships.” P. 94 

This is what Dr. Haidt says about it:

“…having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse—is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don’t see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.” P. 94

So externals matter. There are ways to increase happiness by working on the conditions of life, particularly our relationships. That is the C in the equation. The most important condition or C is love—not just love in the abstract but loving relationships with real flesh and blood human beings.

H= S + C + V

V is action. These are voluntary activities. V stands for those things we voluntarily choose to do. They include activities that seek pleasure and that build on our skills and strengths. Haidt writes:

“So V (voluntary activity) is real….You can increase your happiness if you use your strengths, particularly in the service of strengthening connections—helping friends, expressing gratitude to benefactors.” P. 97-8

If C is love then V is work.

To put it simply in our happiness formula,

H = S + C + V

Happiness equals your set point plus loving relationships plus meaningful work.

That was a sermon I already preached on June 24th the first Sunday of summer when I started this series.

Four days later on June 28th, my 25 year old son, Zachary, died unexpectedly.

How do I fit that in the formula?

Happiness equals set point plus love plus work minus tragedy.

Jonathan Haidt does say that the set point is called set point for a reason. People win the lottery and after the initial euphoria wears off they tend to drop back to their initial happiness biological set point. People experience tragedy and after a time of grief then they tend to move back up to their biological set point.

I guess we’ll see. I am not so sure about that but I’ll keep you posted.

To prepare for this series I bought a bunch of books on happiness. They have titles such as:

• Stumbling On Happiness
• The Pursuit of Happiness: Discovering the Pathway to Fulfillment, Well-Being, and Enduring Personal Joy
• Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill
• Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment
• The Happiness Project: Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

I think those are all probably very good books. I haven’t opened any of them.

Recall this scene in The Wizard of Oz.   The scene is near the end when Dorothy, the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man have discovered that the Wizard is a phony. He is no wizard. He is a blowhard from Nebraska. He does know a few things, though. He proceeds to pull out of his black bag a diploma for the scarecrow, a testimonial for the tin man, and a medal of valor for the lion. He knows that they had all those virtues already. They just needed them recognized.

Then it is Dorothy’s turn. Dorothy sees the helpless look on the wizard’s face and she realizes she is in a different universe from her friends. She says,

“I don’t think there is anything in that black bag for me.”

No there isn’t. She is from a different world. A tornado ripped through her life. Her friends can watch and try to comfort her from a distance but there is nothing they or the phony wizard can give her that will help her get where she needs to go.

Like Dorothy, there is nothing in that stack of happiness books for me. At least for now. They are from a different world. Maybe they will be helpful someday.

In a day or two lives will be ripped apart along Florida’s coast and the Gulf Coast due to Hurricane Isaac. Hopefully there will be enough warning so people can find safety but no amount of forecasting and television coverage can communicate the pain of loss. It is surreal watching the before knowing there will be an after.

This life is fragile. I wonder if the only way we can protect our sanity is to pretend it isn’t.

When I selected the texts for this summer, I chose this saying for today from the Gospel of Thomas. It is a quote attributed to Jesus that sounds a lot like one from Luke 17:20-21:

When asked by the Pharisees when the empire of God would come, he answered them, “You won’t be able to observe the coming of the empire of God. People won’t be able to say, ‘Look , here it is!’ or ‘Over there!’ On the contrary, the empire of God is among you.”

I like the Thomas version more:

“His disciples said to him, ‘When will the Father’s empire come?’ ‘It won’t come by watching for it. It won’t be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the Father’s empire is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.’” --Gospel of Thomas 113

One question is whether or not Jesus is right. Is the empire of God spread out upon the earth and among us or is it something that needs to come? That is a big question. Is God going to make it better someday or is what we got what we got and you ought to find the the empire of God within it?

Scholars cannot agree on what Jesus thought about that. The texts attribute both views to him. Some say Jesus was apocalyptic, that is that God will intervene and make life better. Others say no, Jesus believed that life is what we see and what we make it to be.

So what view is likely to make us happier? Will we be happier if we believe that the empire is something that will come in the future or will we be happier if we believe that the empire of God is spread out everywhere right now?

I tend to think that people believe what they need to believe. For what it is worth, I say, believe whatever gets you through.

This came in an email to me today. I liked it so I will share it with you:

Hope is not pretending that troubles don't exist.
It is the trust that they will not last forever,
that hurts will be healed and difficulties overcome.
It is faith that a source of strength and renewal lies within
to lead us through the dark to the sunshine.

I suppose this empire thing is both/and for me. Sometimes the sadness and pain are too great to see the beauty and hope that is present, but I have trust or faith that it is there and that it will come. Maybe, in time, we will find it--in a happiness formula, maybe in someone’s black bag, a stack of books, a song, a scripture verse, a journey inward, or maybe through the eyes of a friend who can help us see it.

Amen.

Bitchy

The song that keeps running through my head is "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" by the Beatles.   Before all the Beatlemaniacs tell me what the song "means" or "meant" for me it is about grief.   Grief is Love.   Grief is Love that has lost its object.   It doesn't matter whether the grief is over a breakup or a death, the song speaks about the loneliness of grief, its shame and its social stigma.     Here are the lyrics. 

Here I stand head in hand
Turn my face to the wall

No that won't do.  You've got to hide your grief away.  Hide it away.  We don't want to see it.  Take it to a shrink or to a group or to your momma but don't show it.   Your time is up.  We have to move on.  When are you going to get better?  When will you be your old self again?   When are you going to get to that "new normal?"   No one is saying this.  This is my projection even as it isn't just my projection.   No one wants to see people grieving forever.   So for those who do wonder when I am going to be my old self again, I do have an answer.   Here it is.   I will be better on April 1, 2075 at 3:30 p.m.  Can you wait that long? 

The astute observer will note that the patient is starting to get in touch with his anger.   It reveals itself in sarcasm and painful witticisms.    When approaching the patient take care not to do the following or you may lose your eye teeth.

1. Mention God.  The patient and the Divine Master of the Universe are not on speaking terms.  No theological acumen on your part will do anything to change that.
2. Attempt to cheer up the patient or say something "hopeful" such as "Someday you will grow from this."   Grrrrr.
3. Give advice to the patient of any kind about any thing.  Period.

I know this is confusing.  It is one thing to respond to someone's hurt and pain.  It is totally another to try to respond to anger.   The most important thing to know about "the patient" is that if you do run into anger, remember it is not about you.   You could note that the sky is blue and I might trip out on you.   I have changed, not anyone else.    Those of us who are grieving may not even know what these feelings are about and where they are directed.    The sad part is that "the patient" may drive away those s/he needs most.  At least that is what the patient fears.

So, please, hang in there with the patient and keep trying.

For those wanting to be present with someone in grief, here are some suggestions. 

A Universe From Nothing

I just interviewed Lawrence Krauss, physicist and author of A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing.    I enjoyed both the book and the conversation and you can hear the interview in a few weeks on Religion For Life.  

This is a book about cosmology and the universe and how wild it is.  He takes a few well-deserved and necessary pokes at theologians who want to fit "God" in there somewhere.   He shows convincingly to me at least that there is not much place for "supernatural shenanigans" as he puts it.   He writes:

A universe without purpose or guidance may seem, for some, to make life itself meaningless.  For others, including me, such a universe is invigorating.  It makes the fact of our existence even more amazing, and it motivates us to draw meaning from our own actions and to make the most of our brief existence in the sun, simply because we are here, blessed with consciousness and with the opportunity to do so.   p. 181

I have been blathering for six years on this blog.  I have expressed my doubts about God, life after death, and what have you from the vantage point of a minister.   I like religion.  I embrace its social aspect.  I regard its mythologies as poetry.   When religion is honest it is good.  But it is hardly ever literal for me.   

In doing this, I have felt a little guilty.  Perhaps I was writing from the perspective of a person born sucking a silver spoon.  Perhaps if I suffered more I would more readily accept the teachings of the orthodox faith and bow to the wisdom of Mother Church and her guardians.  If I was more acquainted with pain I would embrace the truth of the bodily resurrection and the reality of a personal God.

Now with the death of my son, I think I am a legitimate member of the "sufferer's club."   If that isn't a pitiful club to join I don't know what might be.

Yet even after this experience, I cannot say I am more willing to embrace orthodoxy.   I am pretty much the same as far as all of that goes.  I recognize the impermanence of life more.   Some of the theologians got that right.  I do love church.  I love the hymns and the scriptures, but more importantly I love the people.    I am fiercely proud and in awe of anyone who does and believes in whatever they need to do or believe in in order to cope with the excruciating fragility of life.

But after all of this, I am, at the end of the day, no more and no less than I was before, still in the camp of Krauss, who writes about the universe's future thusly:

Our universe will then recollapse inward to a point, returning to the quantum haze from which our own existence may have begun.  If these arguments are correct, our universe will then disappear as abruptly as it probably began.

In this case, the answer to the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" will then simply be:  "There won't be for long."  p. 180

Oddly enough, I am OK with that.


    

Preferences

On the upstairs coffee table the change is piling up.   I empty the change out of my pockets there at night.     Every couple of weeks it would vanish.  It was kind of a game.  Zach would grab it--probably for cigarettes or gas or who knows.   Yesterday I told Lovely that he hadn't picked up the change and she said she used to leave things around, too.  She would leave for him leftover food especially of the meat and potato variety.    Now we will have to eat our own leftovers and spend our own change.

It is the little things that get me.   That hollow burning pain in my chest never leaves even as it changes in intensity.  It burns when I drive by the Dairy Queen, or Mellow Mushroom, or Lowe's, or the Roadrunner, or ETSU.  I haven't driven on the street by his apartment since we closed accounts with his landlord.   I don't like to drive to that side of town. 

On some days or on some parts of a day, when the chest burning is low, I think that I am coming along.  Then I realize the truth.  It shrieks through me like a January Montana wind.  He isn't here.  He isn't coming back.  Ever.   What does any of it matter?  The burning starts again.   It reminds me of Robert Frost:

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March. 

I have led worship three times.   This was the first I didn't have to hold back tears during the sermon.  I was doing pretty well until our organist, David, played "Be Still My Soul" during the offertory.  Then I started blubbering.   I guess I am just going to have to blubber through every damn song in the hymnal.

The funeral home has been very helpful in many ways.   I subscribe to a daily grief support--words of wisdom thing--via the email.  This was today's:

Your Needs Come First When Grieving 

1. Express preferences. Pay attention to your preferences. Let others know what you can't or don't want to do. 
2. Know your limits. If you are tired or don't feel like doing something, you can choose not to do it. The most important thing is your care. Your friends and family will understand if you do not join in some activities.
3. Say no. If you are invited out, but do not feel like going, it is okay to say no. Others may want to see you out, as they do not like to see you in pain. If you choose to decline some activities, you do not need to give a reason.

That is nice to know.  In that spirit, here are some preferences. 

I hear tell that there is a presidential election this year.   I am not really that oblivious but I really don't care.  I will show up and vote for one of the suits, but it is all so shallow to me.  The only thing more shallow is Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) politics.    Many of those in my former life who were on the "other side of the aisle" have been gracious to us through this loss.   That matters to me.   I will go to the presbytery meeting and stay for worship and see people.  But I doubt I'll be present for the business.   I don't want to debate or to engage in decision-making or watch others do it.  I sure as hell don't want to fight.

I have resigned from every community and presbytery committee and board.  Every day when I open my e-mail I "unsubscribe" to the various newsletters of groups soliciting my righteous passion.     In regards to work, I am letting go of anything I have to run, plan for, organize, schedule, or moderate (except for the monthly session meeting).   Thankfully, I have a great secretary, Sandra, who can administrate a lot of this.

Also, I have a colleague, Rev. Don Steele, a retired PC(USA) minister who I wrote about previously.    Don is taking some of the load of working with committees and so forth.   We have given him the title, "Assistant to the Pastor."   Hardly a title for what he has done for me, my family, and my congregation.   This is all I am going to say about it, but I do hope our presbytery will recognize his gifts and receive him as a member.  As far as I am concerned, no minister can hold a candle to him.

For my part, I can lead worship.  I will do the radio show, Religion For Life.   I will do the funerals and the pastoral care and counseling, the weddings, the hospital, the conversations over coffee, and the meeting of new people.    I will hang out with the youth, but I won't run the program.    I am getting more and more requests for holy unions for same-gender couples.   I am glad the word is getting out about that.   Those are gratifying.   Don will help with all of this, too. 

I'll show up for stuff.   Sometimes I may not.   On some days I will just stay home.   Lovely doesn't have such flexibility with her job.  But since I do, I will take advantage of it so I can be more present to her.   

I will also find ways to grieve for my son both with Lovely and Daughter and the extended family and alone.

So let it be written. So let it be done.